With the exception of his determinedly oddball first film, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, George Clooney has focused his directorial career almost entirely on earnest and deliberately old fashioned that attempt to blend entertainment and social commentary along the lines of what Stanley Kramer did back in the day with such projects as The Defiant Ones, On the Beach and Judgement at Nuremberg. The only trouble is that, aside from the genuinely powerful and well-crafted Good Night and Good Luck, these films—including The Monuments Men, The Midnight Sky, The Tender Bar and others that you probably have already forgotten about—have been largely lifeless affairs that have been put together with undeniable professionalism but without any sort of suggestion that these were stories that needed to be told and that he was the person who needed to tell them. That is definitely the case with his latest effort, The Boys in the Boat, a well-meaning but increasingly tedious inspirational sports drama that leaves no cliche untouched as it goes about its painfully familiar way.
Adapted from the best-selling book of the same name by Daniel James Brown, the film tells the true story of the struggles and (Spoiler Alert) eventual triumph of the members of the rowing team at the University of Washington who overcome all forms of adversity to win the gold at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The guiding character is Joe Rantz (Callum Turner), a student at the school who, due to financial hardships that threaten his education, tries out for the team primarily because making it will help to fund his studies. Under the tutelage of gruff coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton), Joe and his fellow teammates, all of whom come from blue-collar backgrounds, manage to pull together into a cohesive unit to the point where Ulbrickson makes the audacious call to send the junior squad to the Olympic tryouts instead of the seniors. When they manage to pull off a surprise victory, Ulbrickson then has to battle various hurdles put up by the US rowing authorities, who would prefer a more polished team to represent them. After overcoming those difficulties, they finally make it to Berlin, where they face their greatest test of all in a final race against Germany with Hitler himself in attendance and the eyes of the world on them.
While the team’s triumph is undeniably inspiring, its depiction here is anything but. While the racing sequences are presented with a certain cinematic flair, everything else is done in such a pro forma manner that it is impossible to develop any real interest in the proceedings. The dramatic conflicts are presented in the clunkiest of terms with everything spelled out in the most blatantly black-and-white terms with dialogue to match. (The cringiest moment comes at the Olympics when the team crosses paths with Jesse Owens (Jyuddah Jaymes) who proceeds to explain in the most laughably unsubtle terms the real reason why he is running). Similarly, the characters are never particularly interesting either—Clooney and screenwriter Mark L Smith fail to properly explore either Ulbrickson’s drive and determination to succeed beyond the broad strokes (no pun intended) or much of anything about the other members of the team, preferring to spend that time trying to make Joe more interesting by giving him undercooked relationships with an old crush (Hadley Robinson) and the team’s avuncular boat builder (Peter Guiness).
As I said, The Boys in the Boat is a determinedly old fashioned inspirational sports drama and those with a taste for such things—the kind of viewers who rushed out to get the 4K of Rudy the moment it hit shelves—may indeed enjoy it after all. However, there was never a moment when I ever felt the kind of passion or enthusiasm that is required to make a story like this work—other than the fact that the book was a bestseller, there is never any indication of what it is about this story that might have inspired Clooney to film it. He isn’t a bad filmmaker but, aside from his first two projects, he has become an increasingly lackluster one. His work here isn’t overtly terrible (aside from the aforementioned Jesse Owens scene) and is far from the worst thing that he has done as a director (it certainly beats the genuinely mystifying likes of Suburbicon or The Midnight Sky) but it is deeply and overtly forgettable and in a weird way, that is almost worse—even if you happen to see it and enjoy it, it is highly unlikely that you will remember anything about it even a few weeks later.